The New York Times
February 21, 2008
Pentagon Is Confident Missile Hit Satellite TankBy THOM SHANKER
WASHINGTON — Just hours after a Navy missile interceptor struck a dying spy satellite orbiting 130 miles over the Pacific Ocean, a senior military officer expressed high confidence early Thursday that a tank filled with toxic rocket fuel had been breached.
Video of the unusual operation showed the missile leaving a bright trail as it streaked toward the satellite, and then a flash, a fireball, a plume and a cloud as the interceptor, at a minimum, appeared to have found its target, a satellite that went dead shortly after being launched in 2006.
“We’re very confident that we hit the satellite,” said Gen. James E. Cartwright of the Marines, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “We also have a high degree of confidence that we got the tank.”
General Cartwright cautioned that despite visual and spectral evidence that the hydrazine rocket fuel had been dispersed, it could take 24 to 48 hours before the Pentagon could announce with full confidence that the mission was a success. Even so, he said the military had 80 to 90 percent confidence the fuel tank was breached.
The fuel tank aboard the satellite was believed strong enough to survive the fiery re-entry through the atmosphere, and officials expressed concerns that the toxic fuel could pose a hazard to populated areas.
General Cartwright said debris from the strike, with individual pieces no larger than a football, already had begun to re-enter the atmosphere. Most, he said, was predicted to fall into the ocean.
Even so, the State Department was alerting American embassies around the world so they could keep their host governments informed, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency had put out instructions to first responders across the United States about steps to take should hazardous debris fall in populated areas.
The first international reaction came from China, where the government objected on Thursday to the American missile strike, warning that the United States Navy’s action could threaten security in outer space.
Liu Jianchao, the Chinese foreign ministry’s spokesman, said at a news conference in Beijing that the United States should also share data promptly about what will become of the remaining pieces of the satellite, which are expected to re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere and mostly burn up in the next two days.
“China is continuously following closely the possible harm caused by the U.S. action to outer space security and relevant countries,” Mr. Liu said, according to the Associated Press. “China requests the U.S. to fulfill its international obligations in real earnest and provide to the international community necessary information and relevant data in a timely and prompt way so that relevant countries can take precautions.”
American officials were critical of China last year for using an anti-satellite weapon to destroy a satellite in a much higher orbit in January 2007 and then refusing to confirm the test for nearly two weeks. The Chinese test produced 1,600 pieces of debris that are expected to orbit the Earth for years, preventing other spacecraft from using the same or similar orbits.
During a Pentagon news conference Thursday morning, General Cartwright rebuffed those who said the mission was, at least in part, organized to showcase American missile defense or anti-satellite capabilities.
He said the missile itself had to be reconfigured from its task of tracking and hitting an adversary’s warhead to instead find a cold, tumbling satellite. “This was a one-time modification,” General Cartwright said.
Sensors from the American missile defense system were an important part of this mission, though, he said.
He stressed that “the intent here was to preserve human life,” but also acknowledged that “the technical degree of difficulty was significant” and the accomplishment earned cheers from personnel in command centers across the military, as well.
Completing a mission in which an interceptor designed for missile defense was used for the first time to attack a satellite, the Lake Erie, an Aegis-class cruiser, fired a single missile just before 10:30 p.m. Eastern time, and the missile hit the satellite as it traveled at more than 17,000 miles per hour, the Pentagon said in its official announcement.
“A network of land-, air-, sea- and spaced-based sensors confirms that the U.S. military intercepted a nonfunctioning National Reconnaissance Office satellite which was in its final orbits before entering the Earth’s atmosphere,” the statement said.
By early Wednesday, three Navy warships were in position in the Pacific Ocean to launch the interceptors and to track the mission.
Radar and other tracking equipment, both in space and on the ground, were monitored at Vandenberg Air Force Base, in California, and at a space command headquarters in Colorado Springs, with control of the operation managed by the Strategic Command in Omaha, Neb.
Although the satellite circled the globe every 90 minutes, analysts pinpointed a single overhead pass each day that would offer the best chance of striking the satellite and then having half of the debris fall into the atmosphere in the next three orbits over water or less-populated areas of the Earth.
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who left Washington on Wednesday for a week of meetings in Asia, had been empowered by President Bush to issue the order to shoot down the satellite and gave the order several hours before the strike.
The many moving parts of a mission to shoot down a dying spy satellite with an antimissile interceptor were lined up earlier Wednesday after the space shuttle Atlantis returned to Earth, officials said.
Military officials said their goal had been to carry out the mission before March 1, when the satellite was expected to start skidding against the upper reaches of the atmosphere.
That initial friction would bump the satellite into a more unpredictable Earth orbit, even before it started a fiery descent through the atmosphere.
Providing new information about how the mission would be carried out, a senior military officer on Wednesday described the vessels, weapons and command structure for the operation
The senior military officer said the mission would be launched in daylight to take advantage of radar, heat-sensor tracking and visual tracking equipment. The Navy had a window that lasted only tens of seconds as the satellite passed overhead, military officers said.
The Lake Erie has two Standard Missile 3 rockets that were adapted to track the cold satellite, as opposed to the heated enemy warheads for which it was designed. A second ship, the destroyer Decatur, had a third missile as backup. Another Navy destroyer, the Russell, sailed with the convoy for added tracking capabilities.
The 5,000-pound satellite, roughly the size of a school bus, was managed by the National Reconnaissance Office and went dead shortly after it was launched in December 2006.
The FEMA document notes, “Any debris should be considered potentially hazardous, and first responders should not attempt to pick it up or move it.”
